1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to helmets for wearing during sports play and more particularly to helmets that fit a wide range of head sizes.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Baseball helmets are commonly used and are required for league play, as a hard thrown baseball pitch or a bat deflected ball striking a batter's unprotected head may cause injury and even death. While no batter's helmet may totally prevent head injuries, they can reduce the severity of the injury and in many cases prevent injury. Baseball batters' helmets generally use a shell with a crown portion, a forwardly projecting bill and rigid earflaps extending downwardly and forwardly to protect the sides of the head.
Helmets are available in different sizes so as to properly fit the different sized heads of the players of a baseball team. Baseball team rosters may have as many as twenty players on them. Accordingly, it can be quite expensive to supply each player with a helmet that fits his or her head. While it is common for professional, semi-professional, college and even high school teams to spend the money necessary to assign a helmet to each player, such is not the usual case with youth leagues, such as the league known by the trade mark Little League.RTM., where budgets can force the youth league to look for alternative ways to deal with outfitting the players with helmets.
One way youth leagues can outfit a team of players is to use helmets that may be adjusted to particular head sizes by the use of removable and replaceable pads within a standard size of helmet shell. Such helmets, such as those helmets made by Park View Manufacturing, Inc. of Salem, Ill. under the trade names of AIR.RTM. Pro 2700, AIR.RTM. Pro 2788 and AIR.RTM. Pro 2800, may suffer from the disadvantage that the pads can be easily lost.
Another solution to outfitting youth leagues is to use tile helmets. However, tile helmets are often too floppy and tend to fall down over the eyes of the wearer. The helmets also often fall off during base running, leaving the runner vulnerable to head injury if hit by a ball thrown to the baseman.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,575,017 describes an adjustable baseball helmet that uses a V-shaped elastic band or strap to cradle the helmet on a batter's head. The helmet 300 is schematically shown in FIGS. 1A-B. One disadvantage of that helmet is that it fits loosely at the rear. As shown in FIG. 1B, when the head 302 is cradled by the elastic band the rear part of the head is unsupported by the elastic band 304 which results in the helmet 300 shifting from the front to the back during play.